Speakers

Andrea Di Benedetto

andrea-di-benedetto

Andrea was born in Salerno, is 42 and studied and now lives in Pisa. He is an entrepreneur and has founded three businesses.

In 2001 he founded 3logic, a tech start-up that works in system integration and the internet of things, and manages and distributes digital images. It currently works with large Italian businesses in the car, fashion and telecommunications industries. Andrea is still CEO.

In 2009 Tunia was born, an organic wine business combining sustainable production choices with hi-tech systems that monitor the wine production process and the distribution cycle.

In 2012 SpazioDati was launched in semantic valley in Trento. The first business incubated by TrentoRise, SpazioDati is the biggest Italian tech start-up to work in open data and open services. In 2014 it received the largest round of investments in the world of Italian big data from CERVED.

Andrea has always been interested in innovation policies and in organising and growing small businesses. Since 2013 he has been national vice president of the CNA (National Confederation of Craftsmanship, a trade association with about 350,000 members, both craftsmen and small and medium-sized businesses) with a mandate for innovation and the digital world. He has also been the national president of Young Entrepreneurs, where he contributed towards debates on the role of employer associations and on the modernisation of the association, focusing particularly on new technological crafts. He is now working on CNA Digitale to improve the connection between Italian manufacturing and the digital world, to construct rapid prototyping and technology transfer and promote physical spaces for innovation (fablabs, incubators, accelerators).
He is the president of the Polo Tecnologico di Navacchio (Pisa), a space where digital start-ups are accelerated and the largest number of ICT businesses in Italy are based. Andrea works on technology transfer based on open innovation.

Andrea is a strong believer that openness and transparency (open data, open access) are the main drivers for developing knowledge, value and legality. Since 2011 he has been head of Linked Open Data Italia, an association promoted by businesses in the sector to spread the semantic web and the freedom of data across Italy.

In 2010 he launched CNA NeXT, a festival of collective intelligence that promotes debating and spreading success stories of organisation and distribution models. Each year scientists, entrepreneurs and intellectuals get together at what is currently the largest meeting of its kind in Italy. He co-authored the book “Italia, ce la puoi fare – 15 giovani, un racconto, 150 proposte” (Italy, you can do it – 15 young people, one story, 150 proposals) [Pagliai, 2011] with Dario Nardella and Marco Bani, among others.